


Marbles Lost and Marbles Found

by FireEye



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 17:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20411518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: A day on the job, a night on the... job.





	Marbles Lost and Marbles Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/gifts).

The car rolled to a stop outside of an unassuming apartment complex. At the sudden, unexpected lack of momentum, J lifted her head.

And blinked.

“I thought we were chasing a suspect.”

Sure, it had been a particularly _dull_ chase so far, and one that K had been fairly reluctant to let her in on all the details of. But then, that was K – reluctant to share anything, even an easy smile. If anything, K was an expert on not smiling.

In fact, as she found when she rolled her head that way, K was pointedly _not smiling_ at her now.

“K, you seem to have gotten turned around. See, this is my place.”

“You were nodding off,” K remarked. “I thought maybe we’ve been working you too hard.”

“Is there really such a thing as _working too hard_ when the galaxy or the Earth or-... that little pizza place I like – you know, the one down on the corner from HQ – is in danger?”

Behind the sunglasses, K’s eyes flicked over her. Self-consciously, J sat up in her seat, and straightened her tie.

“Okay,” she tried a different approach, “you remember that little agreement we have where you don’t treat me like a little kid, and I don’t treat you like the gigantic _singularity_-sized asshole you can be?”

K stared.

J fidgeted.

“Oh. Well. Guess I must have dreamed that up at some point.”

“You’re tired,” K told her. “Get some sleep.”

Sucking in a breath, J reached to unlock the buckle on her seatbelt. She dragged herself out of the car.

“We’ll pick it up in the morning.”

“Yeah, yeah,” J grumbled. She sighed, scratching behind an ear. The car began to pulled away, and she only then thought to call after it, “Hey, call me if you find anything, alright?”

With a sigh, she checked her pocket for her key...

...which she stared at for a minute and a half before, thinking better of it, hailing a cab.

***

“Why the hell is it whenever this shit happens I feel like I’m being sent to my room?”

The empty glass in her hand didn’t have an answer. Neither did the bartender – or if she did, she was doing a good job at keeping it to herself. J suspected that she didn’t, though she was a good listener.

“It’s not like I can’t handle the job, or anything like that; I mean, we only _saved the world_ three times last month.”

J rolled the glass over in her hand, dropping her forehead against her knuckles momentarily before, on second thought, lifting herself up to face the bartender again.

“Shit, um... do me a favor, forget-... forget the _saving the world_ part, okay?” The girl nodded hesitantly, and J offered up her most charming smile. “Thanks.”

J raised the glass, happened to glance at the window, then choked on its contents.

“Oh, shi-...”

She dropped under the bar, just in time, as the door to the bar opened, otherwise unnoticed and unremarkable under the rest of the evening’s din.

She was already making up an excuse or three when K stalked right past on the way to the back wall. To the back _room_, in particular, that no one else seemed to realize was there. K was simply there one moment – checking her watch, casting the rest of the bar a rigidly casual glance – and gone the next.

J blinked, coming back up.

“Did... you just see...?”

The bartender was looking at her strangely.

“I’ll just, um...” J thought about it, then realized out loud, “I got a tab. I’m good.”

Stalking towards the far wall, she slid on her jacket and straightened the shirt under it. As K had done, she checked her watch, and found nothing amiss. She glanced at the bar, nothing strange there either, and no one paid her any mind. Hesitantly, she reached for the wall...

...only to find herself standing on the other side of it, in a back-of-your-local-drinking-establishment storage area. Several stacks of boxes kept her hidden long enough for her duck behind them unseen; she peered around them to the scene in front of her.

K, and someone else. A man... a _tall_ man, who J would have easily made the bet wasn’t from this neighborhood.

The standoff was tense. K had a de-atomizer gripped loosely in her hand, hidden behind her back. The stranger had... a... marble.

J squinted.

She recognized him from his mugshot. Ugly dude from planet _unpronounceable_ on the other side of the galactic bulge that they couldn’t even see from here on Earth. Small time petty crook.

As J tried to catch a snippet of whatever was going on, the conversation must have taken a bad turn, as evidenced by how K leveled her weapon and the stranger drew one of his own.

At which point, she no longer felt the need to ask what was going on.

Shooting to her feet, J reached for her own gun.

“Hey,” she called, “hold it!”

K’s attention barely slipped, but the man’s disguise thinned as he roared. As he turned to flee, his tail smacked K, and she stumbled back off her feet. He disappeared through a perfectly _normal_ door set into the brick wall behind him.

“K!” J bounded out of hiding to her partner’s side. No blood, no left over stingy-bits, but K grimaced as J dragged her off the floor and into a sitting position. “You alright?”

“Forget me,” K snarled, in a voice that was not to be argued with, “get _him_.”

A moment’s hesitation, and J scrambled to follow the man out the back door. From the dead-end alley, she glanced both ways, took a breath and launched after the man as he fled down the street.

He might’ve been fast, but she knew this town. She paced herself, even as the evening traffic slowed him down for her. Taking a gamble, she cut through another alley, and came out in front of him to throw down a containment unit.

Which was MiB code for _sweet-smelling sticky gunk_ that would keep him safely locked down until a crew could pick him up, and mitigate the public’s concerns – aka _memories_ – involving aliens in their midst.

J wished they’d had _that_ in the NYPD.

The marble slipped from his fingers, and J caught it before it could roll through a sewer grating.

Might’ve been important...? Might’ve been a marble.

***

Rejoining K at the corner outside of the bar, J sank down beside her on the bench set against the wall.

“Man...” Finding whatever she was about to say not even worth saying, she rolled her head towards the woman beside her. “You okay?”

K held out her hand.

J’s eyes narrowed, and she filled in the blank herself, “_Yes, J – thanks, by the way, for saving my ass back there_.”

Ignoring her partner’s outstretched hand, J examined the marble she’d seized. It looked for all the world like a dark piece of glass.

“What is this thing, anyway?”

“It’s a black market weapon that can vaporize a planet twice the size of Jupiter.”

J’s eyes flicked between the marble and her partner’s face. She dropped it into K’s waiting hand. This time, at least, J might have understood the not smiling thing, if only just a little.

“Fuck _that_ shit.”

Ignoring her, K raised her phone to call in the report. 

“Zed. We have it. Suspect awaiting pickup.”

Blinking at J’s all at once _giddy_ expression while she closed the phone one-handed, K asked, “What?”

“You knew I’d be here, didn’t you? That’s why you called the meeting _here_, instead of... wherever else.”

K didn’t smile.

“You really should get some sleep.”

She pocketed her phone, and got to her feet. J followed her, pushing up off the bench with a disgruntled huff.

“I just saved the Earth and life as we know it, _c’mon_. That makes _four_. _Four times_, this month.”

“All the more reason to take better care of yourself.”

“Okay, look – _compromise_ time. You and me, one round. To celebrate.”

K stared.

J stared right back.

Then thought to tweak her approach.

“One round, I’m buying.”

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a swap I hadn't have thought of before I saw it in the tagset, but I got a kick out of it so I hope you like this take on it. :D


End file.
